IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK; a novel by the author of Another Country

BALDWIN, James

ISBN 10: 0803741693 / ISBN 13: 9780803741690

Published by The Dial Press, NY, 1974

About this Item

8vo, pp. 189. A fine copy in original wraps. Bookseller Inventory # 52734

Bibliographic Details

Title: IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK; a novel by the ...

Publisher: The Dial Press, NY

Publication Date: 1974

Edition: Uncorrected Galley.

About this title

Synopsis:

Harlem, the black soul of New York City, in the era of Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles. The narrator of Baldwin's novel is Tish nineteen, and pregnant. Her lover Fonny, father of her child, is in jail accused of rape. Flashbacks from their love affair are woven into the compelling struggle of two families to win justice for Fonny. To this love story James Baldwin brings a spare and impassioned intensity, charging it with universal resonance and power.

From the Publisher:

Like the blues -- sweet, sad and full of truth -- this masterly work of fiction rocks us with powerful emotions. In it are anger and pain, but above all, love -- affirmative love of a woman for her man, the sustaining love of a black family. Fonny, a talented young artist, finds himself unjustly arrested and locked in New York's infamous tombs. But his girlfriend, Tish, is determined to free him, and to have his baby, in this starkly realisitic tale... a powerful endictment of American concepts of justice and punishment in our time.